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IN Music News THIS WEEK: Pacific Mozart to San Quentin
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By Janos Gereben
Pacific Mozart to San Quentin
Richard Grant's Pacific Mozart Ensemble will perform in San Quentin State Prison on Halloween and All Saints Day afternoons (before the evening lockdown begins), October 31 and November 1. Lest you wonder about the authenticity of this item, SFCV will have a review of the performance there next week. The price of admission: clearance after providing full identification and signing an agreement that acknowledges the prison's policy of not negotiating for hostages.
Ten inmates, preparing for months and rehearsing with Pacific Mozart for the first time on Sunday night, will be the soloists in Stephen Vincent Benet 1930 Pulitzer-Prize winning drama, John Brown's Body, with Walter Schumann's music, conducted by Arthur Rubinstein. The two performances, for invited guests, will be videotaped for future broadcast. The event is part of a two-year project by Academy- and Emmy-Award winning editor Joseph DeFrancesco. He calls San Quentin "a high-profile prison in America's high-profile prison system," and says that just as the venue is unusual, so is "the success of the inmate-actors and the daunting commitment to perform `off-book,' something never done before with this work."
Pacific Mozart got involved the last minute, when the originally invited Chanticleer declined. "As worthy as the project is, unfortunately the ensemble's schedule would not permit us to participate," Chanticleer marketing director Nancy Roberts said. "November 1, the second performance, is the date of our Youth Choral Festival and concert."
Into the Breech, Marin to St. Louis Marin Symphony Music Director Alasdair Neale is having a bigger opening week than expected. After opening the Marin Symphony's 50th anniversary season Sunday night, he was awakened Monday morning by a distress call from the St. Louis Symphony. Its scheduled guest conductor Edo De Waart had been unable to travel to the U.S. due to storm systems in Europe. Neale will catch the red-eye to St. Louis after Tuesday's Marin concert to begin rehearsals Wednesday in St. Louis. Neale will conduct the St. Louis Symphony in Powell Symphony Hall Friday and Saturday in Beethoven's Overture to Coriolanus, the Triple Concerto (with SLS principals) and Symphony No. 7
Green Center: Denial or Determination? Last week, we reported here that the $75 million Sonoma Green Music Center project is being postponed because of an $18 million shortfall in the initial $48-million fund-raising goal. Reaction to the news, first reported in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, included expressions of concern and two statements of unreserved determination. Santa Rosa Symphony music director Jeffrey Kahane, whose orchestra would be the main tenant of the 1,400-seat concert hall and other facilities, told SFCV that the Center will be built, no matter what. "Whatever may be happening at the moment, the fact is that the Green Music Center is going to become a reality within a few short years," Kahane said. "At that time, all of the agonies we went through to make it happen will be history, and audiences from all over the North Bay and beyond will be flocking to concerts at one of the most beautiful halls in America." The orchestra's new executive director, Alan Silow, told us that "contrary to recent local newspaper headlines, the fundraising plan for the next phase of the Green Music Center has regained momentum. There has been no postponement. Phase I has been completed, including parking lots, public roads, bridges and related infrastructure. "We cannot control the unexpected downturn in the economy and the stock market, but we can control the choices we make and the actions we take. Thus, SSU and the Santa Rosa Symphony have restrategized a new campaign that will continue to move the project along in `bite-size' phases with construction of the symphony hall as the next step," Silow said.
Classical, If Merola-Less Stern Grove SFCV could not get a response from Stern Grove Festival executive director Corrina Marshall why the SF Opera Center's Merola Program is not part of next year's season (after an unbroken record of 43 years), but she did affirm that classical music will remain in the Grove. "The Festival has been, and will always be, firmly committed to presenting high-quality, professional performances of classical music (including opera) and dance as part of our free summer performance series," Marshall wrote in response to the column item. The why-no-Merola question will now be addressed to other top festival officials: Douglas E. Goldman (chairman), Dennis Wu (vice chairman), Dr. Sandra Hernandez (secretary) and Queenie Taylor (program chair). Stay tuned to the eventual resolution of a puzzlement.
Otello Relief Tenors After changing singers in the title role of the San Francisco Opera production of Verdi's Otello from performance to performance, last weekend it became necessary to find a new tenor between acts. Jon Fredric West, struggling with health problems (and negative reviews), called it quits after Act 2, and in came another Moor, Antonio Barasorda. Reports from War Memorial said he was "the best of the lot." Barasorda is becoming a "relief tenor" par excellence, having gone on stage also last week in the middle of a Metropolitan Opera Andrea Chenier, when Placido Domingo couldn't continue. Among his other mid-stream rescues, Barasorda stepped in for Carlo Bergonzi a couple of years ago, at the Opera Orchestra of New York's Otello, for the last two acts, just as here. The next War Memorial Otello, tonight, is Vladimir Galouzine, and the title role for the last performance, on November 1, is up for grabs.
Homeland Defense Vs. Musicians, Another Victory The Artemis Quartet has had to cancel its November 1 concert for San Francisco Performances at Herbst Theater due to visa difficulties, the news coming hard on the heels of similar stories. The group was scheduled to make its fifth US tour October 19 - November 4, but the quartet's cellist has yet to be granted a visa, pending further in-depth background checks, as the result of a "very minor misdemeanor" 11 years ago. SF Opera may be running out of Otellos, but SF Performances quickly found another European ensemble, the French-Romanian-Dutch Orpheus String Quartet, to substitute. The program: Mozart's String Quartet in F Major, K.590, Bartók's Quartet No. 2, Op. 17, and Beethoven's String Quartet in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2.
Texas-Size Tribute to SF Symphony Dallas Morning News music editor Scott Cantrell paid enthusiastic tribute to the San Francisco Symphony in a Sunday feature headlined "In a galaxy of struggling orchestras, San Francisco's soars." Commenting on the combination of "economic acumen and an edgy artistic approach by Michael Tilson Thomas," Cantrell sings the praises of SFS finances: "Its $48 million budget is exceeded by only the orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. (The Dallas Symphony Orchestra's figure is $21.9 million.) And while other orchestras are making headlines with budget deficits ($6.1 million in Chicago, $1.6 million in Houston, $850,000 in Dallas), San Francisco is in the black."
(Janos Gereben, a regular contributor to www.sfcv.org, is arts editor of the
Post Newspaper Group. His e-mail address is janos451@earthlink.net.)
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